


Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine

by Edoraslass



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, MCU, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Brainwashing, F/M, M/M, Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues, making assassins, nothing graphic, your normal Winter Soldier trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1563428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edoraslass/pseuds/Edoraslass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For  the prompt: ""He's not the Winter Soldier because they found him in the snow. Not because he's as harsh as a Russian winter. Nor because he's frozen in cryostasis before he can thaw fully. Winter Soldier is called such because the owner of his heart is frozen solid in the North Atlantic."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt on the stevebucky_fest kink meme  
> http://stevebucky-fest.dreamwidth.org/307.html?thread=78643#cmt78643  
> Yeah, there was not much chance I was going to let a fairy-tale-esque prompt like that escape me.
> 
> Mentions of the normal Winter Soldier stuff: torture, mind-control, human experimentation - you know the drill
> 
> Title from Pablo Neruda, because apparently I am a sap

~*~

They found him at the bottom of a deep ravine, cradled by snow as deep as a man is tall, and so it is no wonder that he was frozen. 

Despite this, he was not dead, oh no; he was only mostly dead, and, as everyone knows, “mostly dead” means “slightly alive”. 

“He is perfect,” said the lieutenant, for he was the leader of the team, and as such he had orders of which the other men did not know. “We have searched these many years for a specimen such as this. Our doctors will be delighted.” 

And so they bundled him up, gently placed him on a stretcher, took him back to a stronghold high, high in the mountains, and delivered him to the doctors, who were overjoyed at being gifted with such a prime subject. 

The doctors wrapped him in warm blankets, strapped him to a table, injected him with many needles, needles full of medicine and chemicals and potions meant to thaw his icy flesh without as little damage as possible, and you may think that this sounds unlikely and well-nigh magical, but believe me when I tell you that these were not ordinary doctors. 

And they waited, to see if their concoctions would produce favourable results. 

They waited two, three, four days, and at sunset on the fourth day, he awakened, groggy and muzzy from the injections, but awakened nonetheless. Although groggy and muzzy from the injections, he fought and thrashed like a man possessed, but fortunately the doctors had strapped him firmly to the table, so that he would not be able to injure himself upon regaining consciousness. 

More injections soothed his troubled spirit, and soon he calmed, adrift on a sea of secret medications which have yet to be reproduced, even to this day. 

“It is good,” said the doctors, “that he fights. It proves that his spirit and will to live are undefeatable, and we do not want a weak-willed man.” 

Of course what they did not say, did not say and never spoke aloud, was that a weak-willed man would have rendered their experiments useless, for part of their exploration was proving that even the strongest man can be broken; broken and rebuilt into something pure and beautiful and terrifying. 

So they kept him secured to the table, straps cruelly tight across his chest, round wrists and ankles, so that he could not break free nor harm himself (nor harm the doctors working their will upon him; but that goes unspoken, does it not?) 

They kept him so confined for many, many hours; for weeks and months and although I am sure you will not believe me, for a year and a day, until a time when he stopped fighting, stopped struggling to free himself, and responded like the most placid child when the doctors demanded his cooperation. 

Because even the strongest man can be broken, if only the right pressure is applied. 

The doctors were pleased; pleased that science had triumphed over a man’s natural inclination toward free will. They congratulated each other on a job so very well done,   and were ready to move into the next phase of their experiment. 

The doctors converged upon him, with more needles and tests and clipboards of questions and evaluations of this man who was now a blank slate, malleable and ready to receive any impressions upon his mind that they might care to stamp upon him. 

Now I will tell you that their perfect subject was not quite perfect, not “perfect” as you or I would call it – their subject had two flaws. Firstly, one arm had been damaged beyond repair. You might think this would thwart and anger the doctors, but you would be utterly wrong; this excited them as children presented with a new toy, for an arm damaged beyond repair meant that they could replace his arm of flesh with one of metal, and they had waited many years for this opportunity. 

Secondly – and the doctors did not discover this flaw for some time, as they were distracted and preoccupied with other things – although their chemicals and medicines had thawed the man’s flesh and muscle, his heart remained frozen solid. 

The doctors were puzzled and confused, for how could it be? To be alive is to have a beating heart, and yet this subject had a block of ice where his heart should be. 

They performed all the tests they knew, created new ones, and all returned the same result: their subject’s heart was simply ice, frozen hard as tundra and equally unyielding. 

Finally the eldest doctor, the doctor with the most experience and least patience, declared, “This does not matter. He does not need a heart, after all, does he?” 

All the other doctors nodded and murmured and agreed that a heart would only get in the way of what they hoped to accomplish, and so they moved into the next phase of their grand plan. 

~*~

 Another year and a day passed, and at the end of that time, their subject was exactly what they wished him to be: an assassin, more deadly and skilled than any the world had ever seen (or would ever see). They spent every waking hour insinuating their will upon his mind, exhausted themselves creating a being to obey any command given, molded him into a weapon that would tear the world apart at the seams, if only he were ordered to do so, and oh, their creation was glorious. 

The doctors presented their glorious creation to the great leader who had demanded such a thing be done (and I cannot name that man here, although you would undoubtedly find his name in your history books), and this man was stunned and exhilarated that his desire for a perfect deadly soldier had been brought to such astounding fruition. 

“You have given me everything I want,” said the great leader. “The Motherland cannot but succeed, with such a work of art at our disposal. What do you call him?” 

They called him the Winter Soldier, not because he was created in a stronghold high, high in the snowy mountains, not because the Motherland was cold and unforgiving, not because they found him in the dead of winter, but because winter had taken hold of his heart, and would not release its grip. 

~*~ 

I will tell you a secret. 

Far, far away from the mountain stronghold, under the bitterly cold waters of the sea, there was an airplane, an airplane that had crashed into the waves, as so many had during the terrible war. But this plane had not been shot down by enemy fire. 

No, this plane had been purposefully flown directly into those dark, icy waters, for its cargo spelled death for thousands and millions of people, and the only way to prevent such destruction had been to destroy this plane by hurtling it into the Atlantic. 

And inside this plane, where it lay quietly rusting on the ocean’s floor, location unbeknownst to any, was another frozen man. 

~*~ 

Their Winter Solider performed beyond all expectations. He carried out every order, no matter how brutal, with nary a question or blink of an eye. He showed no signs of rebellion nor mutiny, not a hint of introspection or self-examination; he simply did as he was told. 

The doctors who had created him were renowned, showered with wealth and given every luxury the Motherland could bestow upon them, even if only a select handful of men knew the specifics of why these particular doctors were so revered. 

(Although if anyone but that select handful of men had been keeping track of these doctors, they would have marked that each of them quietly vanished, unobtrusively and at carefully irregular intervals. For the great leader I spoke of previously was not a fool, and knew that doctors are only men, weak and prideful as any other, and that one day, they might flee to another country, and divulge all their secrets to the enemy.)  

~*~ 

There was of course a dilemma with the Winter Soldier, which I am sure you have already seen, and it was this: one cannot use a glorious creation for everyday purposes. Such a thing can only be used for special occasions, not for mundane problems such as an unimportant election gone wrong, or silly political scandals which will be forgotten in a month. 

The Winter Soldier was special, extraordinary, and as such, could be used only sparingly; what does one do with a special, extraordinary weapon when there is no task at hand for him to complete? He could not be allowed to live in as a normal man might, in a house or flat or cottage, nor could he be placed in the army, amongst common soldiers and officers who did not know of his worth. 

The doctors pondered this question for quite some time (when the doctors were still just doctors and not celebrated men of science), and finally, the youngest and most inventive doctor suggested, “Why do we not simply freeze him again? We can create a containment cell that will hold him in a state of unconsciousness until his particular skills are needed.” 

The other doctors agreed that this was a stroke of genius, and they set about building a cryostasis chamber, which had been discussed throughout the scientific community for many years, but never before been successfully completed.

After lengthy testing – on other subjects, of course; they could not risk damaging the Winter Soldier – the chamber was completed, and the Winter Soldier was interred therein, until such time as he was needed. 

(It might interest you to know that the youngest and most inventive of the doctors was the first to vanish without a trace.) 

~*~ 

I have not forgotten the other frozen man. But he is still frozen, and does not yet enter into our story. He will, I assure you. You must have patience. 

~-*~ 

So the Winter Soldier was placed in stasis, until important and powerful men would decide that he was the most effective solution to their problems. 

Each time he was released, they asked him, “Where are you? What year is it? What is your name?” and each time, he answered, “I do not know. I do know not. I do not know,” for you see, he did not know anything. Before being imprisoned in the cryochamber, his memories of what he had done were erased, wiped clean, and so each time he was removed, his mind was as a blank slate, ready to have a new assignment written upon it. 

I would tell you that the wiping of his memories was an easy and painless process. 

I would tell you that the Winter Soldier retained not the smallest memory scrap of the previous mission each time he was revived. 

I would tell you that the doctors, brilliant and determined and renowned, had reached the pinnacle of mind-control, that all of their hard work had achieved perfection in their Winter Soldier.

 But we are friends, and I should not like to start lying to you now. 

~*~ 

Once, in an unrecorded year, the Winter Soldier was removed not for an assassin’s mission, but for a teacher’s, as unlikely as that may seem. For the doctors (not the doctors who made him, for by this time their bones were ash, scattered to the four winds) thought it was shameful to squander such a resource, when his skills and knowledge might be shared to create more soldiers for the Motherland. 

These soldiers were not typical; they were not young men in their prime, eager and willing to give their all for their country. No, these soldiers did not yet know they were to _be_ soldiers; these recruits were girls, barely into womanhood. These soldiers were uncertain and untrained, harvested from every village and hamlet and city across the land at a terribly young age; girls who showed great potential. 

The Winter Soldier was told to hone these young women – girls – into sharp-edged weapons, for the Motherland’s quiver could not hold only one arrow, it needed many, to fight its many enemies. 

And so the Winter Solider did as he was told, as he was programmed to do, and he set about training these promising young recruits. He had no mercy; there was no clemency. He expected utmost obedience (as was expected from him), and he demanded perfection. 

Many nights these girls returned to their barracks weeping and bruised and bloody. 

On more than one night, one of these girls did not return at all. 

And one night, one surprising, brutal night, one single girl, fair of skin and red of hair, drove her sharp knife deep into the Winter Soldier’s flesh. She spent the next week in traction, hooked to many machines in the infirmary, but although she awoke in agonizing pain, she still felt aglow with the thrill of victory. 

~*~ 

The other frozen man, the one inside the plane purposefully sunk deep under the ocean’s surface, continued to sleep on. And on, and on, and on, undiscovered, the memory of him relegated to myth by almost all. One man, who knew the frozen man was not a myth, continued to search, continued to comb each inch of the ocean with machines created for no other purpose. 

Yet even these machines could not find him, and so he remained undisturbed, lost to time and the sea. 

~*~

 

Although the doctors would not have believed it if they had known, the Winter Soldier had begun dreaming when he was secured in the cryochamber. 

He dreamed of a metropolis on an island. 

He dreamed of a small, dingy room, with a stove that smoked and a window that never shut properly. 

He dreamed of the cacophony of a city just outside his doorstep, a city alive with a multitude of accents and smells and people piled one on top of another, hundreds of small dingy rooms just like his, faces he almost recognized and voices almost as familiar to his ears as his own. 

He dreamed of a man, small and fragile with a backbone of iron and stubbornness yet unmatched; of another man, broad and strong with a backbone of iron and stubbornness yet unmatched. A man that he once knew as well as himself; a man stalwart and steady and true like no other, and somehow, the first man and the second man were the same man. 

He dreamed of waking, and seeing both men above him, smiling, blue eyes alight with joy and relief, and when the Winter Soldier himself awoke, he could not convince himself that the dream was only a delusion. 

~*~

 

Time passed, as time does. The Winter Soldier continued as he ever had. He was brought forth from the stasis chamber when needed, and neatly tucked away when his usefulness came to an end, as good china presented only for holidays. 

His handlers were now men who had been only children when the Winter Soldier was born, men who knew nothing of the world before the tsar was thrown down and the Wall was built up. They had never seen the Winter Soldier before he was made; many of them believed he was not even partially a man, but all machine. 

They followed the strict procedures for the Winter Soldier’s care laid out by the original doctors and scientists, but many things had changed. And over the years, the chemicals used to sedate and re-program the Winter Soldier had altered, become unavailable or unstable, or simply fell out of favour with scientists who thought they were cleverer and more modern than the men who had created this legendary assassin. 

And he was indeed legendary. Stories of his exploits were known throughout the world, spoken of in whispers by secret government agencies, by presidents and prime ministers, dictators and despots, mobsters and heroes and petty black markeeters. Many of them did not believe that the Winter Soldier truly existed; many of them scoffed that he was only a fairy tale, used to intimidate and frighten, for such a creature could not be real. 

Many others, however, knew he was real, for they had seen his handiwork, the trail of perfectly-crafted destruction left in his wake. They did not know his face; they did not know the sound of his voice, but they did not doubt that he was there, lurking in shadow, waiting only to be dispatched. 

~*~ 

The slight, red-haired girl – you remember, the one who once landed a blow on the Winter Soldier as a child? – grew to be a woman, strong and ruthless and beautiful and deadly, the Motherland’s second most effective weapon. And so there came a time when one of the powerful men decided that it would be only natural to send their Black Widow (for that was what they called her) on a mission with the Winter Soldier. Not because she was in need of a partner in espionage, but because she was capable of great subtlety, where the Winter Soldier had not been created for such work. 

Or that is what they told her, when in truth, they wished to test her mettle, to see how she held her own in the field against the Winter Soldier. 

~*~ 

It did not go entirely as planned. 

Oh, it is true that the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow were an unbeatable pair, working together as a finely-tuned machine, bringing destruction and death upon those deemed to be a threat with such skill as to be art of the highest caliber. 

But what the scientists and politicians had not reckoned upon was that, although the Winter Soldier’s heart remained frozen solid, although the Black Widow was rumoured to be an automaton herself, they were both still human. Broken and rebuilt into something pure and beautiful and terrifying, but still human, and so very, very alike in many ways. 

~*~ 

It is unclear how they were discovered, how their handlers found out that the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow had formed an – well, I do not like to say “emotional attachment”, for both were very nearly incapable of such a thing. The Red Room did not allow its operatives to be distracted by things such as emotions, and these two were the most outstanding operatives the Red Room had ever produced. 

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they had come to a place of mutual respect, which had led to something not quite, but almost like trust, or as close to trust as either could manage, which in turn had led to the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow becoming quite intimate, as each had never done with another. 

I suppose it does not matter how; what matters is that they _were_ discovered, and their handlers were furious. Furious that all their hard work had been proven fallible, that their two most outstanding operatives had overcome years of programming and training ground into their skin and bones, training inflicted at the point of knives and needles and wicked psychological manipulations and oh, how those two operatives suffered. 

The Black Widow could not be put into a stasis chamber; she was too valuable an asset to be hidden away for any amount of time, so instead, they merely inflicted much pain upon her, and carefully, thoroughly, wiped her mind of memories they deemed to be too dangerous to remain. 

The Winter Soldier was treated much the same, but with less finesse, if such a thing can be believed, for as I have said, this new generation of doctors did not truly appreciate that the Winter Soldier was, indeed, at his core still a man. Once they had finished re-programming him, the Winter Solider was once again locked away in his cryochamber, and this time, he was left there for many, many, many years. Long enough for the new generation of doctors to become the old guard; for the next batch of doctors to be men who had never seen the Winter Soldier except through the thick, frosted glass of the stasis pod. 

~*~ 

Despite what had been done to her, the Black Widow did not forget. Oh, she did not remember completely, but neither were all her memories destroyed. She remembered a pair of cold blue eyes and a grudging, brief, hard-won smile; she remembered a metal fist striking her jaw, the taste of blood on her tongue, and the satisfaction of driving her own heel into an expressionless face. She remembered a rasping voice whispering her name in the darkness, and drinking vodka until her head spun. She remembered that all this was important to her, although she did not remember why. 

This should not have bothered her, for the Black Widow had many such disconnected memories, and she had come to accept that these memories would never be wholly pieced back together. But this time, she was bothered. This time, these incomplete recollections sat under her skin, rankling like a thorn she could not remove. 

This time, the thought of running prickled around the edges of her mind. 

~*~ 

She did not run, however, because she had no destination, and she knew that the Motherland would find her. 

So she continued with her work, carrying out each mission she was given: stealing state secrets, infiltrating powerful corporations, dutifully seducing kings and queens and presidents, slitting throats of CEOs and princes and fellow spies. It was what she was; it was what she was trained to do, and she had long ago accepted this. 

~*~ 

The Winter Soldier slumbered not-entirely-peacefully for many years. 

He continued to dream: of a man with red skull instead of a face, of a man all red-white-and-blue, of weapons that shot blue fire. 

He dreamed of fist fights in dirty alleyways, and gunfights in the French countryside. 

He dreamed of a package wrapped in butcher’s paper under a spindly evergreen, and the smell of roasted chicken. 

He dreamed of being too cold to feel his fingers, and of sitting next to a campfire, wrapped in warm, strong arms, and when they awoke him, he was angry, angrier than he had ever been. He lashed out with his arm of metal, striking and killing the young technician, and it took every doctor and five hypodermics filled with sedatives to bring him to the ground. 

~*~ 

I have not forgotten the frozen man under the sea. Many people have; many believe he was just a story, only propaganda created to raise morale and cheer the spirits of the people during the long war. But I know better; you should know better as well. 

~*~ 

After that incident, the Winter Soldier was kept under much tighter control. He was released from stasis to wreak breathtaking havoc in a small country called Vietnam; brought out again to burn a path across Afghanistan. Each time, he was returned to the cryochamber as quickly as possible; they did not want to leave him roaming the world, unchecked and so far from their grasp. 

Each time he was released, they asked him, “Where are you? What year is it? What is your name?” and each time, he answered, “I do not know. I do know not. I do not know”. 

It was possible that the newer doctors had not performed the debriefing and re-programming procedures correctly, or that they had not mixed the chemicals quite properly, or, I suppose, that the original doctors had never been as entirely successful at removing the Winter Soldier’s past as they had always assumed. Because these answers were mostly lies. 

He did not know what year it was, naturally, because he had no way to judge how long he had been asleep. But he knew his code name; he knew his handlers sometimes called him Yasha. He knew that he was in a holding facility called the Red Room. He remembered places he had been, even if he did not remember why, and the reverse was true as well: he remembered missions he had carried out, even if he did not remember where those missions had taken place. 

He did not understand why he had started remembering, any more than he understood why he had begun dreaming, and he did not know why he dreamed what he dreamed. 

He told himself that he did not want to know. 

~*~

 Then the Wall came down. 

The Black Widow leapt at the chance, and fled as far underground as she knew how to burrow. She of course was obliged to surface now and again, to work, to survive, but she was careful and cunning and slippery as a shadow, and discovered that working as a freelance agent only increased her own legend, thus increasing the demand for her expertise. 

She never stopped looking over her shoulder, never stopped assuming that the Motherland would send a retrieval team to hunt her down, but even so, she felt more more comfortable in her own skin that she ever remembered being. Living on her own terms suited her, made her even better at what she did. 

~*~ 

The Red Room was abandoned almost immediately upon the _glasnost_ and _perestroika_ which followed the destruction of the Wall. The doctors and politicians held no illusions that they would be in for anything but summary execution, should their work be discovered, and so they shut down all facilities, burned buildings to their foundations, put out elimination orders on all their assets, and melted away into the night. 

In their panic to flee, however, they did not remember the cryostasis chamber hidden in a sub-basement. Perhaps it is not surprising; they had only rarely used the Winter Soldier, and these men had yet to be born when the Winter Soldier was made. In fact, only a handful of them even knew of his existence, and to those particular men, he was as a broom in a janitor’s closet: lifeless and of no use until someone opened the door and set him to task.

 And in that, they were not entirely mistaken, for until someone pressed the correct buttons in the correct order, and gave the correct injections, the Winter Soldier might as well have been a broom.

 ~*~ 

The man frozen in the airplane at the bottom of the ocean will remain there, alone and hopefully peaceful.

 The Black Widow will continue to use her skills as a spy and an assassin. It is what she does best; it is all she knows how to do. Sometimes she will have vague dreams of a man called Yasha, with a crooked smile and a metal arm; sometimes she will have vivid dreams of dancing with the Bolshoi. Always she will feel as if she is being followed. Sometimes it is true, and she is faced with one of her trainers or sisters from the Red Room; she is the only one to walk away from these encounters. 

One day she will take a job that goes horribly, horribly wrong, and she will find herself at the mercy of a man wielding what cannot possibly be a bow and arrow. And then everything will change. 

The Winter Soldier will continue to sleep in his cryochamber for many, many years, until new politicians begin digging into secrets of the past. These men will not have the wealth of knowledge recorded by the Winter Soldier’s original creators, for all the documentation was destroyed when those men fled. They will have only scraps and bits of information, painstakingly gathered from the Soldier’s former handlers by techniques I am sure you would rather not know. 

And so the new politicians and their scientists will not understand how to awaken nor erase the Winter Soldier’s memories properly. They will cobble together what they know and what they can work out through experimentation, and they will come to conclusions that look well enough on paper, but, unbeknownst to them, will lack the subtlety and brilliance of those first scientists, oh so many years ago. 

They will, however, be utterly puzzled by the Soldier’s frozen heart, as were his creators. However, as his creators before them had done, they will decide that it is no matter, will begin to think of new ways to use him to their advantage and the cycle will begin anew. 

~*~ 

And then, one day far into the future, the frozen man under the sea is discovered, entirely by chance. He is discovered, and taken to a top secret facility, where he is laid out to be thawed and reverently prepared for a spectacular burial, for this man, this Captain, is a great war hero, all had thought his body lost forever, and they wish to honour him as he deserves. 

Imagine the surprise of the scientists when they realize that the Captain is not dead. As his flesh grows warmer, it shows no signs of imminent decay, but instead loses its frost-bitten pallor, begins to grow pink and healthy. His chest begins to rise and fall, at first almost imperceptible to the human eye, but then as evenly and regularly as if he were merely asleep on the gurney. 

Of course, a swarm of doctors and scientists descend upon the Captain, taking vials of blood and placing electrodes upon his forehead, chest, arms, legs, excitedly murmuring amongst themselves at the unbelievable readings delivered by the machines. 

Not a single man asks, “How can this be?!”, for they are all the most acclaimed in their fields. There is not a man among them that has not heard of the Captain, not a man among them who has not all dreamt of being able to reproduce the mysterious serum that turned him into the super-soldier of legend. 

Fortunately for all, the Captain remains deeply unconscious through all this, for if awake, he would surely not take such attentions kindly, and, although he would not willingly hurt the innocent, it is likely that he would think he had been taken prisoner. For, of course, the Captain has no memory of his years beneath the ice, and when he awakes, he will believe there is still a great war raging. 

Curiously, there is one machine that reports nothing, and that is the machine meant to measure the Captain’s heartbeat. In all other ways, he is clearly alive, with all bodily systems functioning as a man in the peak of health – except that his heart is frozen solid. 

These doctors are no less confused than were the creators of the Winter Soldier at this phenomenon, but these doctors, being significantly less inclined towards cruel experimentation _(at least most of them)_ ,spend a great deal more time trying to work out how this can be possible. 

Finally one man - who is not a doctor nor a scientist, but a tall man with an eyepatch and more power than all the doctors and scientists combined – finally this man says, “Is he alive? Will this…’frozen heart’ keep him in a coma until he dies?” 

They can give him no answer, but it is true that the Captain’s continued slumber seems to be merely a result of the strain on his miraculous body as it heals itself to recover from the decades in the ice. So the man with the eyepatch orders that the Captain be placed in a recovery room, and kept under close watch, until such time as he awakens fully, or does not. 

The Captain does awaken, a short three days later. After the chaos of his immediate escape is passed, there are more tests, which he relents to with only a token protest, for he understands – and has always understood – that he was given a remarkable gift to turn him into the singular man he is now, and it would be ungracious to protest. 

He does not _like_ all the tests, but he understands the need for them, and the man in the eyepatch has promised that he will be allowed to live his life again, once the endless rounds of tests are completed. 

The Captain has no more idea than anyone why his heart is frozen. When asked, he lies and tells them that he can’t tell the difference. But he can. It is a cold, aching thing in his chest, and sometimes he will lie awake at night, willing his heart to melt, willing it to begin beating. 

But although his will is powerful, his heart does not listen. 

~*~ 

You will already know of the great Battle of New York, and the many smaller battles that the Captain fought with his new team. You will have guessed how lonely and out-of-time the Captain felt, unceremoniously dumped into a strange new century, a time in which everyone he knew has died, or aged almost past recognition. You certainly will understand how the Captain sometimes dwelt overly much on old memories, although he knew it would do no good, that he could not keep himself from doing so. 

And I am certain that you will realize that this Captain, though a singular man, stalwart and steady and true, was still just a man, with hopes and fears and regrets like any other. 

~*~ 

Two years after the Captain is pulled from the ice, the Winter Soldier is once again brought out of cryostasis. Although his makers would consider these new awakening procedures crude and rough, his new keepers awake him nonetheless, and are startled when the Winter Soldier falls to his knees, clutching his chest, giving a cry of terrible pain. 

“What’s wrong with him?!” the man in charge demands. “What have you fools done?” 

It is an incalculable shock when they realize that the Winter Soldier’s heart is _beating_ , sluggishly and unsteadily, but beating as it has not done in well-nigh seventy years. Quickly they lie him on a gurney, only to examine him as if he were any patient suffering a heart aliment, not to dissect or experiment upon _(at least not yet)_ , but the Winter Soldier is in an uproar of pain and terror, and, in such confusion, he believes himself to be once again held prisoner in that stronghold high, high in the mountains. 

Before anyone in the room know what has happened, the Winter Soldier has leapt from the gurney, and worked his exceptional, beautifully honed skill-set on every man jack of them. He does not stop to admire or stand aghast at his handiwork – that was not how he was made – he simply steals clothing and all the weapons he can gather, and flees into the night. 

~*~ 

Not so very far away, the Captain gives a great shout of fear that wrenches him from sleep. He cannot catch his breath, and there is a deep, piercing pain in his chest, the likes of which he has never felt before, not even when he was smaller and sickly every day of his life. 

He sits hunched over on the edge of his bed, trembling, one hand laid flat upon his chest, not quite able to believe what he is feeling. 

His heart is beating.

 ~*~ 

The scientists and doctors are at a loss as to how this has happened. Neither the man with the eyepatch nor the Captain have much patience with them, and so the Captain lays the problem before two particular friends and teammates, one of whom loudly proclaims himself to be a genius at any moment the opportunity presents itself, the other of whom is quieter and more introspective, but also a genius in his own way. 

However, even these two men, working in tandem for days on end, can come up with no solution, not even when they consult with other men of science. “If none of us can figure it out,” the louder man declares, “then it can’t _be_ figured out.” 

“Or perhaps it is not a puzzle to be figured out,” muses one of the other scientists, the one with the face of a beast, who is covered in blue hair from head to toe, “perhaps it is merely that his heart is now ready to beat again.”

~*~ 

The Winter Soldier continues to run, as if the very wolves of the steppes were at his heels. He has no destination; he is not even certain what it motivating him to run. He has no orders, and so in theory, according to his programming, he should be unable to _have_ motivation of his own. 

He kills those sent to recapture him without a thought, for certainly they would not treat him gently if he fell into their hands; he eludes others as quietly and silently as a shadow slipping by in the night. 

He questions some before putting an end to them, demanding any information they have about a man all in red, white, and blue. Some of them only stare at him blankly, made mute by fear; others tell him anything they know, words pouring out as if this will allow them to keep their lives. 

It does not, of course. 

He does not sleep until he falls from exhaustion, and given his extraordinary endurance and ability to ignore the simple needs of his body, he is able to push on for much longer than any ordinary man might. 

When he does sleep, he dreams strange and fell and wonderful dreams. They are terrible nightmares, filled with blood and fear and the screams of men and women and even children dying at his hands. They are warm and vibrant; achingly vivid images of cacophony of a city alive just outside his doorstep, of a small, fragile stubborn man and a broad, strong stubborn man who are somehow the same man. A man that he once knew as well as himself. 

He awakes in a cold sweat, newly-alive heart pounding like knives driven into unyielding flesh, longing for something to which he cannot put a name. 

~*~ 

Although he dreams of the City more and more often, the Winter Soldier does not know which city it might be, in which country or even on which continent it might be located, and so he drifts with the wind.

 

It is not the city with beautiful red church and its onion domes; in fact, this city makes adrenaline surge under his skin and brings every danger sense he has to life, and he flees it as quickly as possible. 

It is not the city with the small statue of a naked child urinating into a fountain, although this mesmerizes him enough that he spends more than a day there. (The truth is that he finds the statue funny, but it has been many a year since the Winter Soldier had a sense of humour, and he cannot process this feeling)

 It is not the city with the sandstone sphinx, nor the city with the ancient crumbling Coliseum, nor the city that he somehow knows shares the name of a very well-known movie, even if he cannot remember anything about the movie other than the piano player. 

It is not the city with the Arc and the iron lattice tower, but this city rings a faint chime in the blank spots of his memory, and so he wanders it for days, searching for something, anything to remind him.

 He is sitting in a small café in this city one afternoon, poring over a map on an electronic tablet he has stolen from a student, when a woman catches his eye. She is small and pretty with hair cropped in a style he finds both familiar and old-fashioned, and a slender neck he could easily snap with his hand of flesh. But this is not what catches his attention. 

No, it is the shirt she wears that draws his gaze, a black shirt with circles on it, blue inside of red inside of white inside of red, with a white star in the middle. He sees it first as a target, and he wonders why a small, pretty woman is wearing a target on her chest. 

And then the faint chime of memory grows louder, deafening as the bells of the mighty cathedral, and he realizes that it is not a target, but a shield. A shield that, on more than one occasion, protected him from injury, protected him something as harmless as the rain. A shield he knows, with a bone-deep conviction, that he himself has held. He knows exactly how much it weighs, the perfection of its balance, the way the leather straps on the back are too large for his own forearm, made to accommodate the grasp of another. 

By the time he can shake off the dissonance in his brain and gather his senses, the tourist has passed on, and he has lost the opportunity to ask her what the shield means.   So he turns to his stolen tablet, and types _red-white-blue shield_ into the search engine.

 There are scores upon scores of results, and, when he looks at the images, he is shocked to find photos of the strong, broad-shouldered man from his dreams. He clicks on one at random, and the headline _Captain_ _America_ _Defends Midtown From Aliens!!_ leaps out at him. There is no doubt it is the same man; he has dreamed of those eyes framed by that blue cowl more times that he can count. 

The Winter Soldier does not know how long he spends staring at the photo; he only knows that when he comes back to himself, it has grown dark, and the waiter is eyeing him in a manner that sets off all of the Soldier’s internal alarms. 

He throws a handful of crumpled bills on the table, departs as hastily as he can without drawing even more scrutiny. His skin feels too tight for his body, his breath comes in short bursts, and he is not sure that he will reach his rented lodging before confusion overwhelms him. 

_Midtown_. The headline did not name the city, but he does not realize this. To the Winter Soldier, only one city has a “midtown”. 

~*~ 

There has been no progress to the question of the Captain’s now-beating heart, although his friends and colleagues and even a magician or two have been called upon. Even the man who reads minds could only hazard a guess as to the cause, for he cannot read something that is not there, and of course the Captain does not know the answer, consciously or unconsciously. 

It is an unsatisfying state of affairs, but there is nothing for it, as duty once again calls, and the Captain and his friends are obliged to tend to another small matter of national security. This time, it is the rumour of a long-thought-mythical assassin, said to be roaming freely, killing all who would stop him. Reports are that he is heading directly for the Captain. 

“He is called the Winter Soldier,” the Black Widow says – oh, have I not told you? I apologize most humbly: the Widow, unlikely as it may seem, now belongs to the very same team as the Captain. I did say that everything changed for her, once she met the man with the bow, did I not? “And I have seen him, worked with him. He was once my teacher, and he is not merely a rumour.” 

Of course there is much argument as to whether or not the Captain should confront the Winter Soldier, as to whether or not the Captain should be involved in the mission even peripherally, for his friends do not wish to wave a red white and blue flag under the nose of an angry bull. 

But in the end, all grudgingly admit that, if left out of such a mission, the Captain will likely go haring off on his own, heedless of danger to himself, in order to draw out the Soldier and prevent him from harming anyone else.

 So the Captain and his friends assemble, and set about finding this Winter Soldier. 

~*~ 

The Winter Soldier arrives in the City, and finds that it is both familiar and foreign. He does not know why he thinks this, for looking at the scraps of his memories is like looking at a photograph that has been double-exposed: in front of him now is a small shop, shoes displayed in the window; underneath he can see a barber shop, smell the shaving soap and aftershave. Both seem equally real to him, and the city is full of these unsettling multiple images. 

He walks towards nowhere, cap pulled low over his face, metal arm hidden under a glove and a jacket, trying to ignore the dull twinge in his chest that has been with him ever since he was awakened. His heart does not beat quietly nor easily; it twitches with pins and needles, as if it were a hand or a foot waking from numbness. It aches constantly, like the ghost of a missing limb. It is as if his heart is not quite thawed; as if some part of it is still encased in ice. 

He was indeed trained to disregard such pain, but it is a sensation so new and unfamiliar that he cannot quite brush it aside. He cannot help but think that it must _mean_ something. 

~*~ 

The Captain and his team do not find a trace of the Winter Soldier on the first day of their search, nor on the second or third. 

At sunrise on the fourth day, however, the Captain receives a telephone call from the man in the eyepatch. “He has been seen heading for the Park,” the man in the eyepatch reports. “You will need to move quickly, if you are to catch him.” 

What the man in the eyepatch does not know is that the Captain is already in the Park, for the Captain does not sleep easy, and often wanders through the city in the wee hours, as if these explorations will help him come to terms with his new life. 

“Wait for the others,” the man in the eyepatch says, but the Captain makes static noises with his mouth, as he has seen his loud scientist friend do, ends the call, and begins searching the Park in earnest. 

He does not want the others to be with him when he finds the Winter Soldier, you see. For what I have not yet told you is that the Captain and the Winter Soldier - decades ago when they were both smaller, more vulnerable, more innocent - were once dearest friends. And while many people know this, there are none yet living who know that the Captain and the Winter Soldier were, in fact, a great deal more than just friends. 

~*~ 

The Winter Soldier remembers the Park, or at least he thinks that he does. He looks at the Theater, and sees it through the scope of a rifle, filled with people; he looks at the same area on the Lawn, and sees small ramshackle dwellings, that housed out-of-work men and their families, people who had no other place to live. 

The first memory he shoves aside uneasily; the second he examines more closely, although it sends a jagged spike of pain through his head to do so. He thinks he was a young man; he thinks there was another young man with him, and he thinks that young man insisted on giving their last two dimes to one of the women standing in front of a shack with two small children. 

The Winter Soldier turns away from the Lawn, and not five meters away, he sees a small, spindly man. A man small and fragile with clear blue eyes and a smile that warms him to his toes; he sees a man, broad and strong, with clear blue eyes, wearing an expression of utter incredulity, and they are the same man. And before he even knows he’s opened his mouth, the Winter Soldier has said, “Steve?” in a small, wavering voice. 

~*~ 

The Captain finds that he is unable to move as he beholds his old friend. The Winter Soldier looks exhausted and haggard; he has rough long hair under a dirty ball cap, hollows under his eyes and in his cheeks that only come from lack of regular meals. And although the Captain knows he should move, or speak, or do something, _anything_ , all he can do is stare, for he never truly thought that he would lay eyes on the other man again. 

The Winter Soldier approaches the Captain, slowly, cautiously, and the Captain holds his gaze unblinkingly. He does not realize that he is also holding his breath until the Winter Soldier reaches out, and lays his hand flat against the Captain’s chest, over his heart, and the Captain’s breath leaves him in a rush, as if he had been punched in the gut. 

“It was frozen,” the Captain says, although he is not certain why. “ **I** was frozen.” He raises his own hand, and places it over the Winter Soldier’s, distantly marking that the Soldier’s hand is strong as as metal under its black glove. 

The Winter Soldier carefully takes the Captain’s hand, and places it over his own heart, which still aches, still beats sluggishly. “It was frozen,” he says, and the Captain thinks he is just repeating the words, until the Soldier adds, “the last time they thawed me, it started beating again, after all that time. I don’t know why.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I think…I think I dreamed you. You gave away our dimes to a woman with no home.” 

~*~

 The Captain makes a strange, harsh noise, and it is a moment before the Winter Soldier can identify the sound as both a sob and a laugh. “I did,” he nods, “she needed them more than we did.”

 The Captain reaches out with his free arm, and the Soldier stiffens, ready to flee or fight, and he does not know what to do when the Captain pulls the Soldier against him, holding so tightly that the Winter Soldier can barely draw air into his lungs. 

“Bucky,” the Captain breathes against the Soldier’s neck, and the word sends a frisson down the Winter Soldier’s spine. He remembers this, remembers the Captain before he was a captain, when he was smaller, more vulnerable, more innocent, when they both were. He remembers pressing his mouth to the Captain’s, when he was a Captain, and when he was just Steve, and the Winter Soldier cannot keep from doing so now, hesitantly, just the barest of lips brushing lips. 

The Captain inhales sharply, and the Soldier has a moment to fear that he has acted on a false memory, but then a smile breaks across the Captain’s face, a smile that warms the Winter Soldier to his toes, and for no reason he can define, this sends a spike of panic through him. 

He staggers away from the Captain, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyelids, struggling for breath as memories break loose and careen inside his head. A gentle touch on his shoulder causes him to lash out violently with his arm of metal, and when he can bear to open his eyes, he is startled to see the Captain lying on the ground, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I didn’t…” he says, “I can’t…” but he has no words to finish the unformed thought. 

The Captain sits up, but does not move closer to the Winter Soldier. He simply says, “I can help you, if you will come with me,” and holds out his hand. An ugly bruise is blossoming on his jaw, but he seems to be unaware. 

The Winter Soldier studies him for a moment that seems eternal. He does not rightly know what he wants; he has no practice in holding his own destiny in his hands. He remembers bits and pieces of this man, but a lifetime of being used, of being nothing more than a weapon is not easily cast aside.

 He thinks that he is broken. He would like to know if he can be repaired, if the damage done to him in that stronghold high, high in the mountains, through countless years in the stasis chamber can be undone. He thinks that he would like to know if he can be remade into something that does not act merely at the behest of ruthless politicians; if he can still make choices without being given orders. 

He thinks he would like to know if his memories of this Captain, and his memories of Steve are true rememberings, not just dreams brought on by injections and years in a stasis chamber. 

~*~ 

The Captain waits in an agony of anticipation, for there is nothing else he can do. His extraordinary hearing can pick up the tell-tale high-pitched whine of a fantastic metal suit approaching, and he knows they do not have much time before the others arrive. 

He cannot tell what the Winter Soldier is thinking; the other man’s face has gone eerily blank, as an expert marksman sighting his target. The Captain remembers seeing that same expression on this same man’s face, a lifetime ago, when the Winter Soldier was just Bucky, and his heart clenches at the possibility that the Soldier might not want help. That he might be irrevocably broken. 

“It is still frozen.”

 The Captain doesn’t know what this means at first, then the Winter Soldier taps his gloved fingers over his heart. “It is still frozen at its core. I do not think it will ever be what it was.” 

The Captain stands slowly, as if the Winter Soldier was a wild animal that might spook at any quick movement. “That is no matter to me,” he replies quietly, “you are here, and alive, when I thought you gone forever. All the rest will come as it happens.” 

~*~ 

The Winter Soldier steps forward so he can take the Captain’s hand. He does not entwine their fingers, just lets them lie in the Captain’s open palm, and this time, when the Captain gives a smile that warms him to his toes, the Winter Soldier ignores the spike of panic, and focuses on the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. 

~*~

 They do not live happily ever after, for this is not that kind of tale. But they do live, and sometimes, they are happy. But they are together, and that is what this tale is about. 


End file.
